Are the same disappointing results happening in every romantic relationship? Are versions of the same drama recycled as each new partner shows up, despite your best efforts to call in a different experience? If this resonates, then it might be time to recognize that your all-powerful subconscious mind is running point in your love life. And when you’re not aware of its power to influence matters of the heart, you can end up frustrated and hopeless. You might even feel that true love won’t ever find its way to you even though you’re desperately seeking it.

Before you lose heart and throw your hands up in despair, thinking some internal mechanism that you’re powerless over is dooming your future amorous happiness, know that there are ways you can partner with your subconscious mind. There are specific actions that can create alignment within you, to bring about a successful connection with someone that will go the distance and be supremely fulfilling.

Here’s what you should know. Your subconscious mind runs 95% of your life, and it regularly hijacks your conscious mind (the part of you that “decides” things). So, if your conscious mind is you telling yourself you’re finally ready for a real and steady partner, but then your subconscious houses every imprint of all the times you’ve opened yourself up to love and it’s backfired, you’re not going to pair up with someone for an abundance of reasons or excuses that might not be known to you.

This is how the subconscious overrides your conscious mind’s desires. You’re going to keep going on dates and not being “attracted” to anyone, or you’ll pick someone who’s not serious about intimacy, and you might wonder why this pattern keeps surfacing. It’s how your subconscious throws up roadblocks so you don’t get burned again. Its main job is to keep you “safe and happy,” per its information from past experiences it has in its storehouse of your personal history. It tries to keep you in your comfort zone, because there are no unknown variables in the status quo; it’s predictable. But it’s also keeping you stagnant. It’s an incredibly powerful inner system that is often at odds with taking risks, being courageous, and trying something new. If it deduces that you being single is what’s going to accomplish that feat of safety, then you’re most likely not going to fall for anyone, or if you do, it will quickly peter out.

And here’s another piece of the SM puzzle and dating: you can also be attracted to that which is familiar to you in some way. What your subconscious recognizes or categorizes as something it knows, will be magnetized to you so you can heal that shadow aspect (what you disown). It’s wired to that frequency of abandonment, shame, disrespect, and betrayal. It keeps you “safe” by repeating sameness, but in doing so, it is also getting you to become whole by recreating the same situations over and over so that you heal from them. That’s its spiritual purpose: so you can see the places where you’re stuck to evolve. You might believe that you’re unworthy of love, and then date someone who continually reaffirms that belief through their careless actions or unavailability. Your subconscious pulls in the partner that brings it all to life as a reflection: your unworthiness in this case, that needs to be highlighted for you to heal that negative idea.

What you believe within you, you create outside of you. And one shade deeper, that which you’re unwilling to acknowledge from past traumas around intimacy, relationships, even from your childhood caregivers, the subconscious holds onto and recreates again and again until you’re willing to stop running from it and do the work to shift it. And once you do that work, you might surprise yourself by all of the sudden having a new type, or being open to someone you were previously not attracted to, even feeling freer within a relationship that already exists. Working with the SM is about renegotiating ideas around love, commitment, safety, respect, and trust, to name a few. It’s being willing to really be present with everything that stems from your memories, and what you’ve picked up along your journey of life that’s stored in your subconscious, unprocessed or unaddressed.

Remember that you are supremely powerful and your subconscious is trying to support you, but is not always rooted in reality. You have the power to upload a new program, delete any old files in there that no longer serve, and do a full reboot of your expectations of partnership and what you’re worthy of in the love department through your SM: it’s your data bank and guidance system. It’s highly receptive to new ideas, but it’s important to know some concrete ways to rework the SM for real change.

Here are a few of them:

Pay attention to your habitual thinking patterns—they are clues to what the subconscious is downloading on a loop (“I’m not loveable,” “I’ll never find the one”). When you catch one of those underway in real time, stop and replace it with its opposite.

Learn self-hypnosis to be in charge of working with your own subconscious mind to set you up for dating success and reprogram faulty notions and negative internal blocks in your life.

When you fall asleep or when you’re waking, your SM is highly suggestible, so that’s an optimal time to state your dream relationship, its qualities, and how it makes you feel (emotion is important and helps draw it to you). You can say positive things like “I can’t wait to meet my love. I am ready and open to them now and I am excited about it.”

Working with a hypnotherapist or an NLP practitioner is also a fast and effective way to navigate the SM. They can help you through some of the denser aspects of old wounds, unresolved heartbreak, unprocessed childhood trauma, and stubborn negative programming toward yourself and your relationship with others.

Observe your self-talk. How you speak to yourself dictates the quality of love in your life. As with habitual thinking patterns and falling asleep, it’s helpful to apply those techniques to deepening your love for yourself. There is nothing more powerful for drawing love to you than loving who you are, just as you are. When that clicks into place and the subconscious gets that you are putting yourself first, you’re letting go of unwanted baggage, you’re healing old ideas around love and worthiness, and your soul mate can suddenly show up in all their glory. And you’re fully aligned consciously and subconsciously for being fully available to the deep and rewarding journey of true partnership.